Gaudy Night

3

Sunday, as the S.C.R. always declared, was invariably the best part of a Gaudy. The official dinner and speeches were got out of the way; the old students resident in Oxford, and me immensely busy visitors with only one night to spare had all cleared off. People began to sort themselves out, and one could talk to one’s friends at leisure, without being instantly collared and hauled away by a collection of bores.

Harriet paid her visit of state to the Warden, who was holding a small reception with sherry and biscuits, and then went to call upon Miss Lydgate in the New Quad. The English tutor’s room was festooned with proofs other forthcoming work on the Prosodic elements in English verse from Beowulf to Bridges. Since Miss Lydgate had perfected, or was in process of perfecting (since no work of scholarship ever attains a static perfection), an entirely new prosodic theory, demanding a novel and complicated system of notation which involved the use of twelve different varieties of type; and since Miss Lydgate’s handwriting was difficult to read and her experience in dealing with printers limited, there existed at that moment five successive revises in galley form, at different stages of completion, together with two sheets in page-proof, and an appendix in typescript, while the important Introduction which afforded the key to the whole argument still remained to be written. It was only when a section had advanced to page-proof condition that Miss Lydgate became fully convinced of the necessity of transferring large paragraphs of argument from one chapter to another, each change of this kind naturally demanding expensive over-running on the page-proof, and the elimination of the corresponding portions in the five sets of revises; so that in the course of the necessary cross-reference, Miss Lydgate would be discovered by her pupils and colleagues wound into a kind of paper cocoon and helplessly searching for her fountain-pen amid the litter.

“I am afraid,” said Miss Lydgate, rubbing her head, in response to Harriet’s polite inquiries as to the magnum opus, “I am dreadfully ignorant bout practical side of book-making. I find it very confusing and I’m not at all clever at explaining myself to the printers. It will be a great help having Miss de Vine here. She has such an orderly mind. It’s really an education to see her manuscript, and of course her work is far more intricate than mine-all sorts of little items out of Elizabethan pay-rolls and so on, all wonderfully sorted out and arranged in a beautiful clear argument. And she understands setting out footnotes properly, so that they fit in with the text. I always find that so difficult, and though Miss Harper is kindly doing all my typing for me, she really knows more about Anglo-Saxon than about compositors. I expect you remember Miss Harper. She was two years junior to you and took a second in English and lives in the Woodstock Road.”

Harriet said she thought footnotes were always very tiresome, and might she see some of the book.

“Well, if you’re really interested,” said Miss Lydgate, “but I don’t want to bore you.” She extracted a couple of paged sheets from a desk stuffed with papers. “Don’t prick your fingers on that bit of manuscript that’s pinned on. I’m afraid it’s rather full of marginal balloons and interlineations, but you see, I suddenly realized that I could work out a big improvement in my notation, so I’ve had to alter it all through. I expect,” she added wistfully, “the printers will be rather angry with me.”

Harriet privately agreed with her, but said comfortingly that the Oxford University Press was no doubt accustomed to deciphering the manuscripts of scholars.

“I sometimes wonder whether I am a scholar at all,” said Miss Lydgate. “It’s all quite clear in my head, you know, but I get muddled when I put it down on paper. How do you manage about your plots? All that timetable work with the alibis and so on must be terribly hard to bear in mind.”

“I’m always getting mixed up myself,” admitted Harriet. “I’ve never yet succeeded in producing a plot without at least six major howlers. Fortunately, nine readers out of ten get mixed up too, so it doesn’t matter. The tenth writes me a letter, and I promise to make the correction in the second edition, but I never do. After all, my books are only meant for fun; it’s not like a work of scholarship.”

“You always had a scholarly mind, though,” said Miss Lydgate, “and I expect you find your training a help in some ways, don’t you? I used to think you might take up an academic career.”

“Are you disappointed that I didn’t?”

“No, indeed. I think it’s so nice that our students go out and do such varied and interesting things, provided they do them well. And I must say, most of our students do exceedingly good work along their own lines.”

“What are the present lot like?”

“Well,” said Miss Lydgate, “we’ve got some very good people up, and they work surprisingly hard, when you think of all the outside activities they manage to carry on at the same time-only sometimes I’m afraid they rather overdo it, and don’t get enough sleep at night. What with young men and motor-cars and parties, their lives are so much fuller than they were before the War-even more so than in your day, I think. I’m afraid our old Warden would be very greatly disconcerted if she saw the college as it is today. I must say that I am occasionally a little startled myself, and even the Dean, who so broad-minded, thinks a brassiere and a pair of drawers rather unsuitable for sun-bathing in the quad. It isn’t so much the male under-graduates-they’re used to it-but after all, when the Heads of the men’s colleges come to call on the Warden, they really ought to be able to get through the grounds without blushing. Miss Martin has really had to insist on bathing dresses-backless if they like, but proper bathing dresses made for the purpose, and not ordinary underwear.”

Harriet agreed that this seemed only reasonable.

“I am so glad you think so,” said Miss Lydgate. “It is rather difficult for us of the older generation to hold the balance between tradition and progress-if it is progress. Authority as such commands very little respect nowadays, and I expect that is a good thing on the whole, though it makes the work of running any kind of institution more difficult. I am sure you would like a cup of coffee. No, really-I always have one myself about this time. Annie!-I think I hear my scout in the pantry-Annie! Would you please bring in a second cup for Miss Vane.”

Harriet was fairly well satisfied already with eatables and drinkables, but politely accepted the refreshment brought in by the smartly uniformed maid. She made some remark, when the door was shut again, as to the great improvements made since her own day in the staff and service at Shrewsbury, and again heard the praise awarded to the new bursar.

“Though I am afraid,” added Miss Lydgate, “we may have to lose Annie from this staircase. Miss Hillyard finds her too independent; arid perhaps she is a little absent-minded. But then, poor thing, she is a widow with two children, and really ought not to have to be in service at all. Her husband was in quite a good position, I believe, but he went out of his mind, or something, poor man, and died or shot himself, or something tragic of that kind, leaving her very badly off, so she was glad to take what she could. The little girls are boarded out with Mrs. Jukes-you remember the Jukeses, they were at the St. Cross Lodge in your time. They live down in St. Aldate’s now, so Annie is able to go and see them at week-ends. It is nice for her and brings in a trifle extra for Mrs. Jukes.”

“Did Jukes retire? He wasn’t very old, was he?”

“Poor Jukes,” said Miss Lydgate, her kind face clouding. “He got into sad trouble and we were obliged to dismiss him. He turned out to be not quite honest, I am sorry to say. But we found him work as a jobbing gardener,‘ she went on more cheerfully, ”where he wouldn’t be exposed to so much temptation in the matter of parcels and so on. He was a most hardworking man, but he would put money on horse-races, and so, naturally, he found himself in difficulties. It was so unfortunate for his wife.”

“She was a good soul,” agreed Harriet.

“She was terribly upset about it all,” went on Miss Lydgate. “And so, to do him justice, was Jukes. He quite broke down, and there was a sad scene with the Bursar when she told him he must go.”

“Ye-es”‘ said Harriet. “Jukes always had a pretty glib tongue.”

“Oh, but I’m sure he was really very sorry for what he’d done. He explained how he’d slipped into it, and one thing led to another. We were all very much distressed about it. Except, perhaps, the Dean-but then she never did like Jukes very much. However, we made a small loan to his wife, to pay on his debts, and they certainly repaid it most honestly, a few shillings each week. Now that he’s put straight I feel sure he will keep straight. But of course, it was impossible to keep him on here. One could never feel absolutely easy, and we must have entire confidence in the porter. The present man, Padgett, is most reliable and a very amusing character. You must get the Dean to tell you some of Padgett’s quaint sayings.”

“He looks a monument of integrity,” said Harriet. “He may be less popular, on that account. Jukes took bribes, you know-if one came in late, and that sort of thing.”

“We were afraid he did,” said Miss Lydgate. “Of course, it’s a responsible post for a man who isn’t of very strong character. He’ll do much better where he is.”

“You’ve lost Agnes, too, I see.”

“Yes-she was Head-Scout in your time; yes, she has left. She began to find the work too much for her and had to retire. I’m glad to say we were able to squeeze out a tiny pension for her-only a trifle, but as you know, our income has to be stretched very carefully to cover everything. And we arranged a little scheme by which she takes in odd jobs of mending and so on for the students and attends to the College linen. It all helps; and she’s especially glad because that crippled sister of hers can do part of the work and contribute something to their small income. Agnes says the poor soul is so much happier now that she need not feel herself a burden.”

Harriet marvelled, not for the first time, at the untiring conscientiousness of administrative women. Nobody’s interests ever seemed to be overlooked or forgotten, and an endless goodwill made up for a perennial scarcity of funds.

After a little more talk about the doings of past dons and students, the conversation turned upon the new Library. The books had long outgrown their old home in Tudor Building, and were at last to be adequately housed. “And when that is finished,” said Miss Lydgate, “we shall feel that our College Buildings are substantially complete. It does seem rather wonderful to those of us who remember the early days when we only had the one funny-old house with ten students, and were chaperoned to lectures in a donkey carriage. I must say we rather wept to see the dear old place pulled down to make way for the Library. It held so many memories.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Harriet, sympathetically. She supposed that there was no moment of the past upon which this experienced and yet innocent soul could not dwell with unaffected pleasure. The entrance of another old pupil cut short her interview with Miss Lydgate, and she went out, vaguely envious, to encounter the persistent Miss Mollison, primed with every remorseless detail of the clock incident. It gave her pleasure to inform Miss Mollison that Mr. A. E. W. Mason had hit on the same idea earlier. Unquenchable, Miss Mollison proceeded to question her victim eagerly about Lord Peter Wimsey, his manners, customs and appearance; and when Miss Mollison was driven away by Miss Schuster-Slatt, the irritation was little relieved, for Harriet was subjected to a long harangue about the sterilization of the unfit, to which (it appeared) a campaign to encourage the marriage of the fit was a necessary corollary. Harriet agreed that intellectual women should marry and reproduce their kind; but she pointed out that the English husband had something to say in the matter and that, very often, he did not care for an intellectual wife.

Miss Schuster-Slatt said she thought English husbands were lovely, and that she was preparing a questionnaire to be circulated to the young men of the United Kingdom, with a view to finding out their matrimonial preferences.

“But English people won’t fill up questionnaires,” said Harriet.

“Won’t fill up questionnaires?” cried Miss Schuster-Slatt, taken aback.

“No,” said Harriet, “they won’t. As a nation we are not questionnaire-conscious.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” said Miss Schuster-Slatt. “But I do hope you will join the British Branch of our League for the Encouragement of Matrimonial Fitness. Our President, Mrs. J. Poppelhinken, is a wonderful woman. You would so much like to meet her. She will be coming to Europe next year. In the meantime I am here to do propaganda and study the whole question from the angle of British mentality.”

“I’m afraid you will find it a very difficult job. I wonder,” added Harriet (for she felt she owed Miss Schuster-Slatt a riposte for her unfortunate observations of the night before), “whether your intentions are as disinterested as you make out. Perhaps you are thinking of investigating the loveliness of English husbands in a personal and practical way.”

“Now you’re making fun of me,” said Miss Schuster-Slatt with perfect good-humour. “No. I’m just the little worker-bee, gathering honey for the queens to eat.”

“How all occasions do inform against me!” muttered Harriet to herself. One would have thought that Oxford at least would offer a respite from Peter Wimsey and the marriage question. But although she herself was a notoriety, if not precisely a celebrity, it was an annoying fact that Peter was a still more spectacular celebrity, and that, of the two, people would rather know about him than about her. As regards marriage-well, here one certainly had a chance to find out whether it worked or not. Was it worse to be a Mary Attwood (nee Stokes) or a Miss Schuster-Slatt? Was it better to be a Phoebe Bancroft (nee Tucker) or a Miss Lydgate? And would all these people have turned out exactly the same, married or single?

She wandered into the J.C.R., which was empty, but for one drab and ill-dressed woman who sat desolately reading an illustrated paper. As Harriet passed, this woman looked up and said, rather tentatively, “Hullo! it’s Miss Vane, isn’t it?”

Harriet racked her memory hastily. This was obviously someone very much senior to herself-she looked nearer fifty than forty. Who on earth?

“I don’t suppose you remember me,” said the other. “Catherine Freemantle.”

(Catherine Freemantle, good God! But she had been only two years senior to Harriet. Very brilliant, very smart, very lively and the outstanding scholar of her year. What in Heaven’s name had happened to her?)

“Of course I remember you,” said Harriet, but I’m always so stupid about names. What have you been doing?”

Catherine Freemantle, it seemed, had married a farmer, and everything had gone wrong. Slumps and sickness and tithe and taxes and the Milk Board and the Marketing Board, and working one’s fingers to the bone for a bare living and trying to bring up children-Harriet had read and heard enough about agricultural depression to know that the story was a common one enough. She was ashamed of being and looking so prosperous. She felt she would rather be tried for life over again than walk the daily treadmill o1 Catherine’s life. It was a saga, in its way, but it was preposterous. She broke in rather abruptly upon a complaint against the hardheartedness of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

“But, Miss Freemantle-I mean, Mrs.-Mrs. Bendick-it’s absurd that you should have to do this kind of thing. I mean, pick your own fruit and get up at all hours to feed poultry and slave like a navvy. Surely to goodness it would have paid far better for you to take on some kind of writing or intellectual job and get someone else to do the manual work.”

“Yes, it would. But at the beginning I didn’t see it like that. I came down with a lot of ideas about the dignity of labour. And besides, at that time, my husband wouldn’t have liked it much if I’d separated myself from his interests. Of course, we didn’t think it would turn out like this.”

What damned waste! was all Harriet could say to herself. All that brilliance, all that trained intelligence, harnessed to a load that any uneducated country girl could have drawn, and drawn far better. The thing had its compensations, she supposed. She asked the question bluntly.

Worth it? said Mrs. Bendick. Oh, yes, it was certainly worth it. The job was worth doing. One was serving the land. And that, she managed to convey, was a service harsh and austere indeed, but a finer thing than spinning words on paper.

“I’m quite prepared to admit that,” said Harriet. “A ploughshare is a nobler object than a razor. But if your natural talent is for barbering, wouldn’t it be better to be a barber, and a good barber-and use the profits (if you like) to speed the plough? However grand the job may be, is it your job.”

“It’s got to be my job now,” said Mrs. Bendick. “One can’t go back to things. One gets out of touch and one’s brain gets rusty. If you’d spent your time washing and cooking for a family and digging potatoes and feeding cattle, you’d know that that kind of thing takes the edge off the razor. You needn’t think I don’t envy you people your easy life; I do. I came to the Gaudy out of sentiment, and I wish I’d stopped away. I’m two years older than you, but I look twenty. None of you care in the least for my interests, and yours all seem to me to be mere beating the air. You don’t seem to have anything to do with real life. You are going about in a dream.” She stopped speaking, and her angry voice softened. “But it’s a beautiful dream in its way., It seems queer to me now to think that once I was a scholar… I don’t know. You may be right after all. Learning and literature have a way of outlasting the civilization that made them.”

“The word and nought else

in time endures.

Not you long after,

perished and mute

will last, but the defter

viol and lute,” quoted Harriet. She stared vaguely out into the sunshine. “It’s curious-because I have been thinking exactly the same thing-only in a [different connection. Look here! I admire you like hell, but I believe you’re all wrong. I’m sure one should do one’s own job, however trivial, and not persuade one’s self into doing somebody else’s, however noble.”

As she spoke, she remembered Miss de Vine; here was a new aspect of persuasion.

“That’s all very well,” replied Mrs. Bendick. “But one’s rather apt to marry into somebody else’s job.”

True; but Harriet was offered the opportunity of marrying into a job as near her own as made no great difference. And into money enough to make any Job supererogatory. Again she saw herself unfairly provided with advantages which more deserving people desired in vain.

“I suppose,” she said, “marriage is the really important job, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” said Mrs. Bendick. “My marriage is happy as marriages go. But I often wonder whether my husband wouldn’t have been better off with another kind of wife. He never says so, but I wonder. I think he knows I miss-things, and resents it sometimes. I don’t know why I should say this to you-I’ve never said it to anybody and I never knew you very well, did I?”

“No; and I haven’t been very sympathetic, either. In fact, I’ve been disgustingly rude.”

“You have, rather,” said Mrs. Bendick. “But you have such a beautiful voice to be rude in.”

“Good gracious!” said Harriet.

“Our farm’s on the Welsh border, and the people all speak in the most hideous local sing-song. Do you know what makes me feel most homesick here? The cultured speech. The dear old much-abused Oxford accent That’s funny, isn’t it?”

“I thought the noise in Hall was more like a cage full of peacocks.”

“Yes; but out of Hall you can pick out the people who speak the right way. Lots of them don’t, of course; but some do. You do; and you have a lovely voice into the bargain. Do you remember the old Bach Choir days?”

“Do I not. Do you manage to get any music on the Welsh border? The Welsh can sing.”

“I haven’t much time for music. I try to teach the children.”

Harriet took advantage of this opening to make suitable domestic inquiries. She parted eventually from Mrs. Bendick with a depressed feeling that she had seen a Derby winner making shift with a coal-cart.

Sunday lunch in Hall was a casual affair. Many people did not attend it, having engagements in the town. Those who did, dropped in as and when they liked, fetched their food from the serving-hatches and consumed it in chattering groups wherever they could find seats. Harriet, having seized a plate of cold ham for herself, looked round for a lunch partner, and was thankful to see Phoebe Tucker just come in and being helped by the attendant scout to a portion of cold roast beef. The two joined forces, and sat down at the far end of a long table which ran parallel to the High and at right angles to the other tables. From there they commanded the whole room, including the High Table itself and the row of serving-hatches. As her eye wandered from one briskly occupied luncher to the next, Harriet kept on asking herself, Which? Which of all these normal and cheerful-looking women had dropped that unpleasant paper in the quad the night before? Because you never knew; and the trouble of not knowing was that you dimly suspected everybody. Haunts of ancient peace were all very well, but very odd things could crawl and creep beneath lichen-covered stones. The Warden in her great carved chair was bending her stately head and smiling at some jest of the Dean’s. Miss Lydgate was attending, with eager courtesy, to the wants of a very old student indeed, who was almost blind. She had helped her stumbling feet up the three steps of the dais, fetched her lunch from the hatch and was now putting salad on her plate for her. Miss Stevens the Bursar and Miss Shaw the Modern Language Tutor had collected about them three other old students of considerable age and attainments; their conversation was animated and apparently amusing. Miss Pyke, the Classical Tutor, was deep in a discussion with a tall, robust woman whom Phoebe Tucker had recognized and pointed out to Harriet as an eminent archaeologist, and in a momentary flash of comparative silence, the Tutor’s high voice rang out unexpectedly: “The cumulus at Halos appears to be an isolated instance. The cist-graves of Theotokou…” Then the clamour again closed over the argument. Two other dons whom Harriet did not recognize (they were new since her day) appeared from their gestures to be discussing millinery. Miss Hillyard, whose sarcastic tongue tended to isolate her from her colleagues, was slowly eating tier lunch and glancing at a pamphlet she had brought in with her. Miss de Vine, arriving late, sat down beside Miss Hillyard and began to consume ham in a detached way with her eyes fixed on vacancy.

Then the Old Students in the body of the Hall-all types, all ages, all varieties of costume. Was it the curious round-shouldered woman in a yellow djibbah and sandals, with her hair coiled in two snail-shells over her ears? Or the sturdy, curly-headed person in tweeds, with a masculine-looking waistcoat and the face like the back of a cab? Or the tightly-corseted peroxide of sixty, whose hat would better have suited an eighteen-year-old debutante at Ascot? Or one of the innumerable women with “school-teacher” stamped on their resolutely cheery countenances? Or the plain person of indeterminate age who sat at the head other table with the air of a chairman of committee? Or that curious little creature dressed in unbecoming pink, who looked as though she had been carelessly packed away in a drawer all winter and put into circulation again without being ironed? Or that handsome, well-preserved business woman of fifty with the well-manicured hands, who broke into the conversation of total strangers to inform them that she had just opened a new hairdressing establishment “just off Bond Street ”? Or that tall, haggard, tragedy-queen in black silk marocain who looked like Hamlet’s aunt, but was actually Aunt Beatrice who ran the Household Column in the Daily Mercury? Or the bony woman with the long horse face who had devoted herself to Settlement work? Or even that unconquerably merry and bright little dumpling of a creature who was the highly-valued secretary of a political secretary and had secretaries under her? The faces came and went, as though in a dream, all animated, all inscrutable.

Relegated to a remote table at the lower end of the Hall were half-a-dozen present students, still lingering in Oxford for viva voce examinations. They babbled continually among themselves, rather obviously ignoring the invasion of their college by all these quaint old freaks who were what they themselves would be in ten years’ time, or twenty or thirty. They were a badly-turned-out bunch, Harriet thought, with an end-of-term crumpled appearance. There was an odd, shy-faced, sandy girl with pale eyes and restless fingers, and next to her a dark, beautiful one, for whose face men might have sacked cities, if it had had any sort of animation; and there was a gawky and unfinished-looking young person, very badly made up, who had a pathetic air of seeking to win hearts and never succeeding; and, most interesting of the bunch, a girl with a face like eager flame who was dressed with a maddening perversity of wrongness, but who one day would undoubtedly hold the world in her hands for good or evil. The rest were nondescript, as yet differentiated-yet nondescripts, thought Harriet, were the most difficult of all human beings to analyze. You scarcely knew they were there, until-bang! Something quite unexpected blew up like a depth charge and left you marvelling, to collect strange floating debris.

So the Hall seethed, and the scouts looked on impassively from the serving-hatches. “And what they think of us all, God only knows,” mused Harriet.

“Are you plotting an exceptionally intricate murder?” demanded Phoebe’s voice in her ear. “Or working out a difficult alibi? I’ve asked you three times to pass the cruet.”

“I’m sorry,” said Harriet, doing as she was requested. “I was meditating on the impenetrability of the human countenance.” She hesitated, on the verge of telling Phoebe about the disagreeable drawing, but her friend went on to ask some other question, and the moment passed by. But the episode had troubled and unsettled her. Passing through the empty Hall, later in the day, she stopped to stare at the portrait of that Mary Countess of Shrewsbury, in whose honor the college had been founded. The painting was a well-executed modern copy of the one in St. John’s College Cambridge, and the queer, strong-featured face, with its ill-tempered mouth and sidelong, secretive glance, had always exercised a curious fascination over her-even in her student days, a period when the portraits of dead and gone celebrities exposed in public places incur more sarcastic comment than reverential consideration. She did not know, and indeed had never troubled to inquire, how Shrewsbury College had come to adopt so ominous a patroness. Bess of Hardwick’s daughter had been a great intellectual, indeed, but something of a holy terror; uncontrollable by her men folk, undaunted by the Tower, contemptuously silent before the Privy Council, an obstinate recusant, a staunch friend and implacable enemy and a lady with a turn for invective remarkable even in an age when few mouths suffered from mealiness. She seemed, in fact, to be the epitome of every alarming quality which a learned woman is popularly credited with developing. Her husband, the “great and glorious Earl of Shrewsbury,” had purchased domestic peace at a price; for, said Bacon, there was “a greater than he, which is my Lady of Shrewsbury.” And that, of course, was a dreadful thing to have said about one. The prospect seemed discouraging for Miss Schuster-Slatt’s matrimonial campaign, since the rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed, to Miss Schuster-Slatt’s distress, or find a still greater man to marry her. And that limited the great woman’s choice considerably, since, though the world of course abounded in great men, it contained a very much larger number of middling and common-place men. The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all.

“Though of course,” Harriet reminded herself, “a woman may achieve greatness, or at any rate great renown, by merely being a wonderful wife and mother, like the mother of the Gracchi; whereas the men who have achieved great renown by being devoted husbands and fathers might be counted on the fingers of one hand. Charles I was an unfortunate king, but an admirable family man. Still, you would scarcely class him as one of the world’s great fathers, and his children were not an unqualified success. Dear me! Being a great father is either a very difficult or a very sadly unrewarded profession. Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him-or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them. An interesting thesis for research. Elizabeth Barrett? Well, she had a great husband, but he was great in his own right so to speak-and Mr. Barrett was not exactly-The Brontes? Well, hardly. Queen Elizabeth? She had a remarkable father, but devoted helpfulness towards his daughters was scarcely ”is leading characteristic. And she was so wrong-headed as to have no husband-Queen Victoria? You might make a good deal out of poor Albert, but you couldn’t do much with the Duke of Kent.”

Somebody passed through the Hall behind her; it was Miss Hillyard. With mischievous determination to get some response out of this antagonistic personality, Harriet laid before her the new idea for a historical thesis.

“You have forgotten physical achievements,” said Miss Hillyard. “I believe many female singers, dancers, Channel swimmers and tennis stars owe everything to their devoted fathers.”

“But the fathers are not famous.”

“No. Self-effacing men are not popular with either sex. I doubt whether even your literary skill would gain recognition for their virtues. Particularly if you select your women for their intellectual qualities. It will be a short thesis in that case.”

“Gravelled for lack of matter?”

“I’m afraid so. Do you know any man who sincerely admires a woman for her brains?”

“Well,” said Harriet, “certainly not many.”

“You may think you know one,” said Miss Hillyard with a bitter emphasis. “Most of us think at some time or other that we know one. But the man usually has some other little axe to grind.”

“Very likely,” said Harriet. “You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of men-of the male character, I mean, as such.”

“No,” said Miss Hillyard, “not very high. But they have an admirable talent for imposing their point of view on society in general. All women are sensitive to male criticism. Men are not sensitive to female criticism. They despise the critics.”

“Do you, personally, despise male criticism?”

“Heartily, said Miss Hillyard. ”But it does damage. Look at this University. All the men have been amazingly kind and sympathetic about the Women’s Colleges. Certainly. But you won’t find them appointing women to big University posts. That would never do. The women might perform then-work in a way beyond criticism. But they are quite pleased to see us playing with our little toys.”

“Excellent fathers and family men,” murmured Harriet.

“In that sense-yes,” said Miss Hillyard, and laughed rather unpleasantly.

Something funny there, thought Harriet. A personal history, probably. How difficult it was not to be embittered by personal experience. She went down to the J.C.R. and examined herself in the mirror. There had been a look in the History Tutor’s eyes that she did not wish to discover in her own.

Sunday evening prayers. The College was undenominational, but some form of Christian worship was held to be essential to community life. The chapel, with its stained glass windows, plain oak panelling and unadorned Communion Table was a kind of Lowest Common Multiple of all sects and weeds. Harriet, making her way towards it, remembered that she had not seen her gown since the previous afternoon, when the Dean had taken it to the S.C.R. Not liking to penetrate uninvited into that Holy of Holies, she went in search of Miss Martin, who had, it appeared, taken both gowns together to her own room. Harriet wriggled into the gown, one fluttering sleeve of which struck an adjacent table with a loud bang.

“Mercy!” said the Dean, “what’s that?”

“My cigarette-case,” said Harriet. “I thought I’d lost it. I remember now. I hadn’t a pocket yesterday, so I shoved it into the sleeve of my gown. After all, that’s what these sleeves are for, aren’t they?”

“Oh, my dear! Mine are always a perfect dirty-clothes bag by the end of term. When I have absolutely no clean handkerchiefs left in the drawer m scout turns out my gown sleeves. My best collection worked out at twenty two-but then I’d had a bad cold one week. Dreadful insanitary garment. Here’s your cap. Never mind taking your hood-you can come back here for it. What have you been doing today?-I’ve scarcely seen you.”

Again Harriet felt an impulse to mention the unpleasant drawing, but again she refrained. She felt she was getting rather unbalanced about it. Why think about it at all? She mentioned her conversation with Miss Hillyard “Lor‘!” said the Dean. “That’s Miss Hillyard’s hobby-horse. Rubbidge, as Mrs. Gamp would say. Of course men don’t like having their poor little noses put out of joint-who does? I think it’s perfectly noble of them to let us come trampling over their University at all, bless their hearts. They’ve been used to being lords and masters for hundreds of years and they want a bit of time to get used to the change. Why, it takes a man months and months to reconcile himself to a new hat. And just when you’re preparing to send it to the jumble sale, he says. That’s rather a nice hat you’ve got on, where did you get it?’ And you say, ‘My dear Henry, it’s the one I had last year and you said made me look like an organ-grinder’s monkey.’ My brother-in-law says that every time, and it does make my sister so wild.” They mounted the steps of the chapel.

It had not, after all, been so bad. Definitely not so bad as one had expected. Though it was melancholy to find that one had grown out of Mary Stokes, and a little tiresome, in a way, that Mary Stokes refused to recognize the fact. Harriet had long ago discovered that one could not like people any the better, merely because they were ill, or dead-still less because one had once liked them very much. Some happy souls could go through life without making this discovery, and they were the men and women who were called “sincere.” Still, there remained old friends whom one was glad to meet again, like the Dean and Phoebe Tucker. And really, everybody had been quite extraordinarily decent. Rather inquisitive and silly about “the man Wimsey,” some of them, but no doubt with the best intentions. Miss Hillyard might be an exception, but there had always been something a little twisted and uncomfortable about Miss Hillyard.

As the car wound its way over the Chilterns, Harriet grinned to herself, thinking other parting conversation with the Dean and Bursar.

“Be sure and write us a new book soon. And remember, if ever we get a mystery at Shrewsbury we shall call upon you to come and disentangle it.”

“All right,” said Harriet. “When you find a mangled corpse in the buttery, send me a wire‘-and be sure you let Miss Barton view the body, and then she won’t so much mind my haling the murderess off to justice.”

And suppose they actually did find a bloody corpse in the buttery, how surprised they would all be. The glory of a college was that nothing drastic ever happened in it. The most frightful thing that was ever likely to happen was that an undergraduate should “take the wrong turning.” The purloining of a parcel or two by a porter had been enough to throw the whole Senior Common Room into consternation. Bless their hearts, how refreshing and soothing and good they all were, walking beneath their ancient beeches and meditating on ‘όν χαί μή ’όν and the finance of Queen Elizabeth.

“I’ve broken the ice,” she said aloud, “and the water wasn’t so cold after all. I shall go back, from time to time. I shall go back.” She picked out a pleasant pub for lunch and ate with a good appetite. Then she remembered that her cigarette-case was still in her gown. She had brought the garment in with her on her arm, and, thrusting her hand down to the bottom of the long sleeve, she extracted the case. A piece of paper came out with it-an ordinary sheet of scribbling paper folded into four. She frowned at a disagreeable memory as she unfolded it.

There was a message pasted across it, made up of letters cut apparently from the headlines of a newspaper.

YOU DIRTY MURDERESS. AREN’T YOU

ASHAMED TO SHOW YOUR FACE?

“Hell!” said Harriet. “ Oxford, thou too?” She sat very still for a few moments. Then she struck a match and set light to the paper. It burned briskly, till she was forced to drop it upon her plate. Even then, the letters showed grey upon the crackling blackness, until she pounded their spectral shapes to powder with the back of a spoon.